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Anne@LittleSproutBooks

About Me

Enjoying the rewards of sharing my love of reading with my children, and hoping to pass some of that joy along to others.
I'm a credentialed teacher who chose to leave the classroom temporarily to enjoy being full-time mom. My boys have crowded bookshelves and I keep a "stash" in the closet of books they have yet to grow into. Library day is a much anticipated treat around here, and bedtime stories always seem to end with, "could we have one more, please?"

I'd love to hear if you've enjoyed the same books we do, or if you know others we might enjoy... so please share!

Amazon suggests:

Monday, February 13, 2012

…And Back Behind the Wheel

I’m back! When I realized I the other day that it was
early December last time I posted, I was shocked! And then again, I wasn’t.
Just before the holidays, I shared my desire to release the overwhelmedfeelings that result from trying to do EVERYTHING and instead focus on doing
SOME THINGS to satisfaction. I gave myself permission to not feel guilty about
not sticking to a posting schedule. I successfully let go of the guilt, but I
missed the creative outlet, the feeling of accomplishment every time I posted
something I was proud of, and especially the interaction and inspiration of the
blog community I’ve become a part of. I also discovered that while I didn’t
want to commit to unrewarding activities just because I “should,” the commitment
of a schedule is good for me, blogging or otherwise. I knew I wanted to get
back to my blog, but without a schedule it kept becoming another thing “I’ll do
tomorrow.”

Inspiration by Mail

In a serendipitous session of late night blog-browsing, I
came across Amanda’s idea at The Educator’s Spin on It for an exchange of book
and activity packs. Besides being a fabulous and fun idea, it was just the
thing to put me back on a schedule and get me back in the bloggy-pool. So if
you’ve read this far, thanks for the personal indulgence and now on to the good
stuff:

What We Got

Our package came from Robyn at Pen Pals and PictureBooks. She sent us a copy of Lois Ehlert’s Fish Eyes. It’s an eye-catching
counting book that lends itself to artistic expression as well as a variety of
language and math skills.

The package also included glue, paintbrushes, tubes
of glitter, and construction paper fish. Her note pointed us to a recent post that featured her own experience with Fish Eyes. Like all Ehlert books, the
colors and patterns are vivid, and while they don’t sparkle, glitter seems only
appropriate in an attempt to capture the bright illustrations. The boys went to
town with their glue “paint.” B experimented with patterns and stripes, while T
favored abstract dots. I couldn’t help but decorate one myself… glitter is hard
to resist!

Fish Eyes provides a visually stimulating counting practice, but it
doesn’t stop there. Each fish in the counted group has a cut-out circle for an
eye, through which the color of the next page is visible. Because each number
group is featured on a two-page spread, some of the cut-outs are on each side.
We used counted the holes on each side and then practiced addition facts to
determine the number of the total group (ie. 3 holes on the right plus 4 holes on
the left equals 7 fish eyes). Ehlert also makes use of many vivid verbs to
describe the number groups, offering opportunities for vocabulary development.
The rhyming text calls upon the reader to consider what he might wish for.
(Would he be a fish?) B decided it would be fun to be a fish as long as he knew
he could turn back into a person. We very much enjoyed both the story and the
art, and we are grateful to both Robyn for sending it and Amanda for the
organization and jump-start!